Illustration is from The Third Estate Sunday Review's "Go down, Dexy" and did any paper due more to spit polish Ahmed Chalabi than the New York Times?

For those late to the party: No.

No paper tongue bathed Ahmed the way the paper of (mis)record did.

They continue their heavy petty with Chalabi today -- even in corpse form:

Mr. Chalabi is the Iraqi perhaps most associated with President George W. Bush’s
decision to invade Iraq and topple its longtime dictator, Saddam
Hussein. A mathematician with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago,
Mr. Chalabi, the son of a prominent Shiite family, cultivated close ties
with journalists in Washington and London; the neoconservative advisers
who helped shape Mr. Bush’s foreign policy; American lawmakers; and a
wide network of Iraqi exiles, many of whom were paid for intelligence
about Mr. Hussein’s government.

Where's Waldo?

If you're going to note Chalabi's ties, chief among them was his ties to the US intelligence community.

But if the New York Times had to honestly cover the CIA, that might mean removing reporters for conflicts of interest.

AFP notes, "A divisive figure often blamed for providing false intelligence on
Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction to justify the US invasion, Chalabi
was a close ally of Washington neoconservatives such as Richard Perle,
Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith in the lead-up to the 2003."

A Shiite Muslim, Chalabi spent years plotting and lobbying in exile
to bring about Saddam's downfall. He founded the Iraqi National
Congress, an umbrella organization for Iraqi opposition groups, in 1992.
The year after the invasion, he attended George W. Bush's State of the Union address, sitting with first lady Laura Bush.But
his reputation in Washington began to suffer as the WMD claims
unraveled. And in 2004, U.S. intelligence officials accused him of
leaking top-secret information about American code-breaking capabilities
to Iran -- allegations he denied.

The coward left Iraq in 1956 and didn't return until after Baghdad fell to the US in 2003.

At the Washington Post, Loveday Morris reminds that Chalabi advocated for the de-Ba'athification process (a move that most observers now see as a mistake and something that ensured the persecution of the Sunnis). She fails to note -- as does every report -- the Justice and Accountability Commission and how destructive that was. However, she does include this:

“He will use whatever vehicle or platform that presents itself to
further his own agenda,” Ryan C. Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq from
2007 to 2009, told The Washington Post as Chalabi campaigned in the 2010
elections.

Exactly. And that was extremely clear for those who followed the Justice and Accountability Commission. Dropping back to February 14, 2010:Ernesto Londono (Washington Post) reports
that Ahmed and his boy-toy Ali al-Lami run the extra-legal Justice and
Accountability Commission which has banned various candidates including
Saleh al-Mutlaq who states, "It is not possible to raise the white flag.
The entire country and its people shall be threatened." Steven Lee Myers (New York Times) adds,
"Mr. Mutlaq, a member of Parliament since 2006, held the No. 2 spot on
the ballot of Iraqiya, a secular coalition of Sunnis and Shiites that
has emerged as a strong rival of the election bloc led by Iraq's prime
minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The No. 3 candidate on the Iraqiya list,
Dhafir al-Ani, was also barred from running."

Ali al-Lami -- the Eva Braun to his Hitler -- died in 2011 and, no doubt, has been keeping a seat warm for Ahmed in hell.

About Me

We do not open attachments. Stop e-mailing them. Threats and abusive e-mail are not covered by any privacy rule. This isn't to the reporters at a certain paper (keep 'em coming, they are funny). This is for the likes of failed comics who think they can threaten via e-mails and then whine, "E-mails are supposed to be private." E-mail threats will be turned over to the FBI and they will be noted here with the names and anything I feel like quoting.
This also applies to anyone writing to complain about a friend of mine. That's not why the public account exists.